where's my sweetheart?
by thecosybookworm
Summary: She's a mother now and it feels like a lie.
1. Chapter 1

Title: where's my sweetheart?

Fandom:Star Trek 2009

Rating: T

Pairings: Winona/George, OC/OC others

 **authors notes: updates will be irregular if continuted**

* * *

Winona Jessica Quinn-Kirk left Riverside as a wife and came back a widow and a newly single mother.

That, just- wasn't fair.

She has the option of maternity leave but refuses it; the mandatory leave of a year for all survivors of the _Kelvin_ more than enough. Being dirt side isn't her style, neither is being domestic but George wanted a family. George would be a great father-

Would _have._ Past tense. She is going to have to get used to that. God, she didn't _want_ to get used to that.

* * *

Tiberius Samuel Kirk is god sent.

She's lost her –husbandbrotherloverfriendfamilyeverything- George (Lost, what a stupid term. George fucking _died_ the asshole) but Tiberius lost his eldest son. He's also been a widower for the past four years and a father to three (two) grown men; his house just too big for one lonely, old man.

He takes care of James; he's retired now (far too early because Starfleet Intelligence isn't all that intelligent apparently) and has the time. He doesn't dote on James, doesn't latter the infant in affection and Winona never pictured him as the sort of man to use baby talk on children or animals. She respects him, can relate and approves of his parenting methods.

Tiberius cares for Jimmy in practical ways; bathing, bottles, clothes- that sort of thing. If he were anything like the nurses, fresh from Med-school all enthusiasm and no experience, that doted on James for the first three months of his life then she wouldn't even consider letting him care for her son. The last thing she wants is to be deemed a hopeless mother from someone whose opinion she actually cares about.

She helps when she can but there's something wrong with her. Her wirings wrong, there some sort of bypass in her circuits that makes it incapable for her to have mothering instincts. Winona looks down at James a sees a small infant and instead of cooing in adoration all she sees is how vulnerable he is, how little effort it would take to harm him and there lies a cold shame in the pit of her stomach. What kind of parent thinks about just how _easy_ that would be? What kind of mother?

She's more equipped for the shipyards; engineering can be done anywhere really, it's the Space Age after all.

She's a mother now and it feels like a lie.

* * *

Everyone brings her casseroles; she doesn't understand this fascination with casseroles.

There's little condolences after Sandy McGill; Winona stands by her actions and believes they were entirely justifiable. Scorch marks litter the front garden, and the white picket fence has pickets that were blown off but no one was _seriously_ injured and she made sure the phasor was set to stun. White picket fences don't offer any security or protection anyway, hardly a worthy any security investment.

Tiberius looks at her in the disapproving parental way that she and George had been on the receiving end of ever since they were five, grass stains covering their clothes and twigs tangled in her hair, and Winona does then what she has always done.  
Winona straightens her spine and her shoulders become squared, she raises her chin defiantly and met her accusers gaze.

George's devil may care smile was a ghost at her side that she cannot shake.

* * *

George has a military funeral and she doesn't bother going. She doesn't feel guilty because George would have hated it anyway and it's not like there's an actual body, just an empty casket, a prop. (Propaganda, Starfleet has turned her husband into a fucking recruitment poster. Jesus Christ.)

It's televised for the whole planet to see, this world and any other. She doesn't go and she doesn't cry about it. Thousands are going in her place and millions are watching from all corners of the universe and she fucking hates it. She hates everyone and if today were her last day alive she would be inclined to make the clocks move faster.

(All she wants his for George to wrap his arms around her and call her _sweetheart_ again)

* * *

James' only a baby, it'll be years before he starts to realise how stifling small towns can be, how much of a small town Earth _really_ is. She and George were the only ones that felt the itch to leave- most of the people born in Riverside, stay in Riverside.

They were not most people; in fact, they were ten when they made their first getaway. She is in-ordinarily proud of this.

George suggested it idly one day in May, and Winona ran with it. By the start of July everything was planned out. Duffle bags were packed, George scraped some allowance together and Winona had downloaded all the best recommended apps she thought she needed onto her PADD. For days they had a giddy, heady childish excitement in every breath. George's impatience was catching and they were both so _eager_ but Winona had decided before everything to wait until school was officially over, because while neither of them were exactly great students there was a _reason_ they didn't skip school and that reason was one Tiberius Kirk.

So, George was driving his father's red antique car (like an actual _car_ from before the Eugenics War, 21st or 20th century and such a _beauty_ ) or speeding more accurately, whooping as they crossed the state border and distantly she'll remember thinking that it'll be a miracle if they don't get arrested but, _God_ , she felt alive.

She wonders if she'll ever feel that way again, wonders if she _can_.

* * *

In the end, Winona goes up into the Black just before James' second birthday.

She's posted as Engineering Officer of the starship _USS Nottingham_ and is to serve under a Captain Pratt- human, male, late forties and of African descent- a minimal risk, maximum caution, by the books sort of leader according to his files. Three percent of the crew will be Vulcan, a grand total of twelve. Eighty eight Beltzoids and thirty Tellirates. The rest will be curious mix of Terrans of all kinds.

There's a three-year mission that frankly sounds rather boring to Winona, diplomatic and scientific missions mostly but she's _seen_ those engines. If _Nottingham_ is being wasted, it's not her problem. Staying in explored territory, within com-range, is hardly a _problem_ , per say. Deep space is still space and she'll be able to talk to Tiberius and eventually James when he's able to properly by exchanging holovids.  
Shore leaves are usually unpredictable and short lived, Winona knows she'll be busy, but she'll make time for her family.

She very firmly does not think about how she'd rather be responsible for a bunch of strangers rather than her own son. She needs this, she's selfish and she needs this. James will be fine without her, or Tiberius would, by sheer force of will, make him.

* * *

Three years is a long time in space, especially if there's people landlocked and waiting for you. Starfleet may have peaceful intentions but at the core it is a military operation, there are risks that every cadet must remember for their exams and risks even the lowliest crewman to the highest ranking officers can't forget for their own safety and the safety of others.

Co-operation is key for space travel so that, well, so no nobody dies a horrible, ugly death in the black, endless vacuum of space where no one can hear you scream. With this in mind, it pisses her off when little things- things easily avoided- get screwed up.

Two diltherium crystals crack in first three months and the Chief Engineering Officer does jack shit about it. Winona goes to a high ranking senior engineering officer, a Vulcan by the name of Syruk and together they go to Captain Pratt.

Syruk informs the Captain of the inferior quality of the crystals; she informs Pratt unless he wants to live up to his name, he should get better quality crystals for her ship, or else. Syruk lists Starfleet's most reputable suppliers and she questions his capability as a captain, that he would carelessly endanger the lives of a crew of four hundred and twelve lifeforms.

"Your ship?" Pratt questions her sceptically and she growls, a primal noise from the back of her throat.

In Medbay, Syruk defends her actions to the Beltizoid Chief Medical Officer in complete monotone with astounding clarity, explaining that giving Captain Pratt a black eye was _obviously_ the most _logical_ course of action given the circumstances.

(It's difficult to explain just how awesome this was to her at the time. No one but George had ever stood up for her, defended _her._ )

It brings them closer together -sort of, he's Vulcan so she can't read him well- at least he seems unperturbed when she joins him for meals and starts spending more free time with him. Winona's quite confident if Syruk was in anyway bothered by her then he'd say so. Vulcans, generally, are blunt like that.

They don't talk about their families or their pasts and that's fine, they'll learn each other through other means.


	2. Chapter 2

It was two days later; two days of driving and laughing, two days of getting lost and arguing over directions and whose turn it was to drive. The lived off of the junk food Winona brought and the picnic food George had made. They slept in the back seat because George had convinced her that there would be bedbugs in any motel they went to, which in hindsight was probably a ruse to not spend more money than they had to, so they slept shoulder to shoulder, Winona's purple duvet covering them as they dozed.

Two days, just the two of them against the world.

Winona had a destination in mind, New Orleans. Looking back, she had no idea _why_ she chose it as she did and George didn't question her. That's just how things were between them, that's what George was like. If she wanted to play hopscotch on the monkey bars, they would play hopscotch on the monkey bars. If she broke her arm playing hopscotch on the monkey bars, George would tumble after her and sprain his ankle in a very heroic but ultimately pathetic attempt to rescue her.

So, it took two days. Two days before George wised up and thought, Hey. Maybe I should call my dad so he knows we're actually _alive_.

* * *

Winona knew that, in the official capacity of things, she was not the Chief Engineering Officer. She wasn't even a senior ranking officer. She's twenty-seven years old with three years of active service if you don't count her year of absence, and has serviced a grand total of three spaceships, one blew up rather famously and the other two were in her academy days as a cadet, sort of as a work placement, to gain experience.  
She knew she didn't have very powerful connections or influence. At least not outside being _the_ George Kirk's widow and oh how she resents that particular title.

Winona held no delusions of grandeur.  
That said, taking over the engineering department of the _Nottingham_ just sort of happened.

* * *

Fradaduitt, the Chief Engineering Officer, is a lazy motherfucker and not only that an _incompetent_ one. He's a second rate mechanic at best and certainly does not belong in space, let alone working on an actual spaceship. Somewhere along the line, people –good people, _her_ people- would die, and it won't be in a blaze of glory saving the lives of people who want to go down with the ship as badly as they do.  
No, it will be because the there's a hole in the ship that sucks out all the air or virus that attacks the ships mainframe that could have been avoided if they updated with the software she recommended. The weapons could jam. The electromagnetic field for the shields give out. All of the diltherium crystals could crack and they'd be stranded without a fuel source in the middle of space. All the commutation channels could get blocked. Fire, since the beginning of space travel the one thing you never want to happen on a ship is a fire.

Paranoia, she had told herself at first. The _Kelvin_ was a one off, unlikely to ever had again. She knew this in her rational mind but irrationally… Starfleet never found out who attack in the first place, and if there was any chance they were still out there…  
The thing is, Fradaduitt did not inspire confidence. She didn't trust him, didn't like him and frankly despised how he was in charge.

Syruk informed her -because Syruk informed and didn't ever participle in the human convention known as _gossip_ , don't be such a silly human - that Fradaduitt knew it all in theory but in practise was disturbingly less than adequate. Winona understood on an intellectual level, people used as replicator in every life for food, some managed to get other things like materials for clothes or more recently buildings out of theirs as well with some modifications and sophisticated coding but not everyone understood how it actually worked. Really worked, not just pressing buttons and then your lunch appears but on the inside.

She got it, she did.  
She still hated the git.

* * *

It was the most terrifying experience of her young life, the two of them strolling down Bourbon Street arm in arm only to see Tiberius Kirk with his arms crossed, looking directly at them as if he could see into their very souls; as if he had been lying in wait. His expression was the darkest she had ever seen it, meaner than her own father's and there was a flash of fear, a second of doubt of whether Tiberius would keep his promise to never ever hit her no matter what.

How he found them, Winona would never know. George _swore_ he only told his dad they were alive and heading southwards and she believed him. He was as scared as she was, his sweat soaked hand seeking out hers. He squeezed her hand hard then but she didn't notice, she was busy pushing her fingernails into his knuckles.

Tiberius Kirk was a super spy; they had grown up with this knowledge. He worked _intelligence_ and didn't elaborate further. For them, he didn't need to. It made sense. Tiberius Kirk knew everything about everything so _of course_ he worked intelligence. He was the smartest man on earth, in the universe, period.

It wasn't until that precise moment that Winona realized how badass this actually made him.

* * *

First Contact was made in the late 2060's if Winona had her history right, which was during the post-atomic horror made from the aftermath of world war two. No, three. World war three, final answer.

(History was never her strength; George liked history but he also leaned more to (xeno)biology and surprisingly enough pre-warp E whereas Winona preferred (astro)physics and hard numbers, chemistry was a mutual hell they both dropped as soon as they could. Winona like the cold uncompromising logic of mathematics (algebra didn't count _asshole_ ) and George like the fluidity of langue, a big reader on fiction and non-fiction alike ( _Dork))_

It was something Winona had wondered about when she was younger and something no one could ever answer for her. Why- what possible, logical explanation- did Vulcans have for allying up with humans? Or, more accurately why would they bother? As a species human's didn't have much to offer Vulcans, practically infants in comparison and wildly irrational.

During in the early 2060's a lot of changes went underway for humanity. The world wide relief project was one of the big ones Winona could remember, everyone everywhere had to rebuild. Old "Third World" counties would have emerged as a superpower if off-worlders hadn't intervened, George had been adamant although Winona hadn't been one to think on the what if's (not back then)

Winona could read between the lines on any text on the matter; historians artfully implying how the Vulcans – and there was no other word for it- _bullied_ the human race into cleaning up their planet all without stating it outright. She couldn't stop laughing for full twenty minutes the first time she saw it, George had timed her.

(Vulcans were the coolest fucking people, she had decided right then and there.)

Now that Syruk was in her life she could ask. She could.  
She doesn't. She's terrified the answer will be something along the lines of pity or charity and it would kill her if that were the truth. (Any other time it wouldn't hurt as much but now, but now -)

That doesn't stop her asking _other_ questions. Questions that shouldn't have answers to them really, the fact that they do is not only disturbing but... _wrong_. Winona isn't the epitome of moral righteousness or whatever else Starfleet spewed about her late husband. She wasn't perfect, she knew that. Nobody's perfect that's just life.

But Jesus Christ, if Vulcan's _weren't_ pacifists?

Winona shudders.


End file.
